It took 18 years to solve, but thanks to DNA testing justice will finally be served for a 17-year-old girl who was found murdered in Wasatch County in 1995.

However, last week the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Department, working in conjunction with Sheriff Thomas M. Knight and his investigators in Sarasota County, Florida, arrested Joseph Michael Simpson, 46, in Florida where the man had allegedly been living for the past 13 or 14 years. Simpson is a former resident of Clearfield, Utah. Simpson was booked into the Sarasota County Jail on one count of Aggravated Murder.

According to a report from the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Department, on December 16, 1995, a girl who was reported to be an alleged prostitute by the Utah Attorney General's website, was found murdered along the Provo River in the North Fields near Midway. Her name was Krystal Lynn Beslanowitch. The cause of Krystal’s death was determined to be blunt-force trauma to the head.

At the time of her death, Former Wasatch County Sheriff Mike Spanos told the Wave that it appeared the girl had been severely beaten with rocks in the head.

Beslanowitch’s boyfriend told investigators that he reported Krystal missing two days after she failed to return from a late-night trip to a convenience store in Salt Lake County.

More than 30 people were interviewed at the time, some even undergoing polygraph tests, but to no avail.

“A hundred leads and nothing has developed into anything,” said Spanos. The leads, however, eventually turned cold and the case remained unsolved for eighteen years.

Simpson has waived extradition and will be transported to Utah within the next few weeks to stand trial for the murder of Beslanowitch.

The Wasatch County Sheriff's Office credits local Deputies Brian Gardner and Wayne Winterton; The State of Utah Crime Lab; Sorensen Forensics; Unified Police Officer Todd Parks; Sheriff Jim Winder; Sim Gill and Vince Meister of the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office and the Odgen Metro Major Crimes Task Force for help in solving this cold case.